


Give Him a Hand

by riverlight



Series: Tumblr ficlets [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Prosthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 01:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1586192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverlight/pseuds/riverlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>—and, okay, Bucky may never have slept with a guy before, but his memory only goes back a year and a month, so what the hell does he know? It's entirely possible that he's slept with plenty of dudes before and he just doesn't remember it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Him a Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Ficlet #3 in the "[send me picture-prompts so I can write you a ficlet](http://riverlight82.tumblr.com/post/83161294155/im-up-late-and-want-to-get-back-into-writing-so)" series, based on [this tumblr post](http://riverlight82.tumblr.com/post/84102944125/lavenderandlilies-meladoodle-ladies).

Okay, okay, so you know what this makes me think of: an AU where they're not at all superpowered but are just normal folks living in New York: Steve Rogers the, I don't know, comic book illustrator living the dream in some tiny studio apartment somewhere, and his two best friends Natasha Romanoff (an actress who's been generating buzz because of her almost eerie ability to inhabit incredibly diverse characters) and Sam Wilson (an incredibly successful athlete who left his promising career and now works with kids with physical impairments, or something: can't you just see Sam working with kids, with that compassion he has? Oh man—). And they all go this this bar, right, and Natasha's been harassing Steve to meet someone for  _ages,_ and Sam's been doing his best to be a good wingman but Steve just can't seem to seal the deal—

And Bucky, meanwhile, is a vet who's recently returned from overseas with not only a prosthetic arm but also a traumatic brain injury, which means he doesn't remember a damn thing about the war or much of anything before it, either. And all his buddies are fellow vets, so for obvious reasons he doesn't hang out with them much (too painful), and he doesn't have much in common with his pre-deployment friends (what do they know about his life, now?) but he knows he's got to somehow reacclimatize to civilian life. So he forces himself to do things like go to bars and talk to people and flirt with women, because it's better than sitting around his shitty tiny apartment all alone—

And Bucky figures out pretty quick that his sense of humor (which is, he'll admit, maybe pretty dark, but how the fuck else are you going to deal with having lost both your arm and your memory in a war you didn't support in the first place?) doesn't go over well with the ladies. Mostly they look kind of horrified when he makes jokes about how maybe they could "give him a hand" with something or how he's an "old hand" at—well, whatever, the point is, they're usually not that thrilled with him, but he finds it funny, okay, and _somewhere_ out there is a girl with the kind of gallows humor he likes, surely—

Except then he's at the bar one night and he says something like this, and the girl in question is sort of shocked and clearly doesn't know what to say—but he's distracted by the fact that someone (who's obviously overheard) has burst out laughing and can't even stop when Bucky glares at—him. Him, it's a guy, and the girl he was chatting up is seizing the opportunity to slide off her barstool and slip back into the crowd, but Bucky doesn't care, because right now he's kind of captivated by this tall blond hunk of a guy who's practically breathless with laughter, and when Bucky says "Hey, buddy, she was about to give me her number, what the hell are you doing, trying to run off the competition?" the guy goes, "Oh, come on, you made a joke about your hand and she didn't think that was funny, she  _clearly_ doesn't deserve you, you're better off without her—" 

—and, okay, Bucky may never have slept with a guy before, but his memory only goes back a year and a month, so what the hell does he know? It's entirely possible that he's slept with plenty of dudes before and he just doesn't remember it, and here's this guy who clearly thinks his detachable-arm jokes are hilarious, and (god, Bucky thinks, he's pretty fucking gorgeous, if you like that kind of thing), so—"Hey," he says, "if you wanted to buy me a drink all you had to do was ask." 

And the guy gives him this almost shy little smile and says, "I'm Steve. Can I buy you a drink?"

And so Steve buys Bucky a drink, and then they go off and have all sorts of romantic meet-cute type dates at places like the Met and Yankees Stadium and the High Line. And Bucky hits it off with Natasha, and Steve goes to Sam for dating advice, and eventually they decide to take part in the time-honored New York ritual of trying to cram two apartments' worth of stuff into one, and they cohabitate in sarcastic dark-humored bliss for a while, and then they live happily ever after THE END. 


End file.
